“Taking a Trip into China”: The Uneasy Pleasures of Colonialist Space in Mansfield Park

Abstract

Eidward Said, in a sparkling interview directed by Sut Jhally for the Media Education Foundation, recalls a childhood in which he gazed with wonder at Hollywood’s Orientalized landscapes. He fondly recalls the swashbuckling adventures of Jon Hall and The Arabian Nights (1942), the sultry seductiveness of Maria Montez in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944), and the diffident Sabu, who graces the set of The Thief of Bagdad (1940) and The Jungle Book (1942). Though famous for his theories of Orientalism as they pertain to the serious themes of colonialism and empire, Said also emphasizes the simple pleasure of viewing these movies, even as he understands that they have no real connection either to his family or to the national cultures and histories to which the films allude and which his later political writing has vigorously explored and interrogated. The aesthetic pleasures of Orientalism do not simply disappear, for as a famous scholar of comparative literature and the author of Orientalism, Said displays great pleasure in Orientalist art, literature, and scholarship—the richly textured paintings of Gérome, Delacroix, and Ingres; the lush imagery of Gérard de Nerval’s Voyage en Orient; even the academic Orientalism of Edward Lane’s history, Modern Egyptians.KeywordsGreat BookWoman WriterIron GateAesthetic PleasureFamous ScholarThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.